Dementia and Intimacy – Having “The Talk” with Older Parents about the Birds and the Bees

Dementia and Intimacy – Having “The Talk” with Older Parents about the Birds and the Bees

Putting the words dementia and intimacy into the same sentence can make some people feel quite uncomfortable.

The good news – or the bad news – depending on your perspective, is that we are born as sexual beings and we die as sexual beings. Even diseases as devastating as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia cannot extinguish that flame within each of us.

My parents had been married for more than fifty years when my dad suffered a debilitating stroke and was diagnosed with prostate cancer. We had never heard the term “stroke-related dementia,” and we did not know that surprising and inappropriate sexual behavior is not unusual in stroke survivors, people who are living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and individuals who take Dopamine to manage the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.